My cousin's family from central Nebraska stayed with us for a few day before going on an Alaska cruise because they loved crab and wanted to go crabbing. I mentioned that while we were soaking the pots we might as well do a little fishing to kill the time and "might" even catch a salmon or two. We got them all set up with licenses and loaded the boat and off we went.

We pulled in to the launch line in Edmonds right behind Mike Carey and were on water headed toward Shipwreck by 6:30am.

Now my "plan" was to cruise over and drop 2 pots just south of Picnic Point, run up and drop two more just south of Shipwreck and then start fishing. My hope was that we might see some on top and get a few twitching jigs but I assumed we would most likely be trolling.

Fishing:
As we turned east to head into shallower water south of picnic point we started seeing pinks rolling and jumping in about 200' of water. I shut down the boat, gave em all rods, a quick lesson on casting and twitching and said to go ahead and try a little casting while I set up the pots.

I didn't even have time to touch a pot before I had to grab the net for the 1st fish on! As soon as I got in netted, bonked & bled I was netting the 2nd! With 4 people & 4 pots in the boat I decided we needed to get the pots out to give us room to move so we motored over, dropped pots and then back out into the 200' depth range. Killed the engine and by 11:30 we had 15 fish in the box, lost at least that many more and everyone (except me) was actually fished out!

That 200' depth seemed to be the sweet area, we would drift east into shallower water and the bite would slow down (but not quit) so we would motor back out and it would pick up again. We were using basic Gringo-made 3/8oz pink/pink(w/flash) jigs (barbless of course) and there was never a time that the fish finder did not show fish from the surface down to 30'. The bite did gradually slow down from about 10am on but never died completely.

One thing that was VERY cool was each time you got the jig within sight there would be pinks following/harassing it. We were able to cast out, lead a group offish back to the boat (if we didn't hook up before getting there) then watch our jigs straight over the side of the boat 10-20' down with 3-6 pinks swarming it. We'd simply twitch until the jig disappeared and set the hook, fish on (I really wish I would have brought my Go-Pro to hang off the DR cable)!

Crabbing:
The crab take was less than stellar - 4 pots soaked 4 hours pulled 2 Dungies and 2 Red Rocks. Lots of under sized.

Adventure:
I'm sharing this because it is good to be able to laugh at yourself :P
After the dismal crab pull it was such a beautiful calm day we decided to run up and drop the pots off Whidbey across from Point No Point, let them soak a bit, have lunch and look around. We got across to Possession Point and the 1 female in the boat needed a potty stop and didn't want to use the 5 gallon bucket & rain poncho I had on the boat. OK, I got a sled, let's just beach over there and you can run behind that boulder....
We beached right at the tip of Point No Point and as she walked over to the huge boulder there I started gutting pinks to give the crab bait a little recharge, well as it turned out, I beached on a high spot (20' in either direction we would have been fine) and we messed around about 2 minutes too long. By the time I got a clue we were just grounded enough that there was no hope of getting out. Luckily for us, we had plenty of food, water & sunblock and it was only a hour before low tide! The next 2.5 hours were spent gutting fish, eating lunch, napping, beach combing, etc. We actually all enjoyed the break and I am sure all of those boats & kayaks that passed the point enjoyed laughing at the idiots that got themselves stranded. We ended up floating again about 2:30 and were still home, showered and enjoying fresh crab, beers and stories by 6pm.

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